


Four- Paradox

by kineticstars



Series: Because I’m Weird [4]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Autism, Autistic Spencer Reid, Canon Autistic Character, Character Study, Emotions, No Dialogue, autistic headcanon, ish, spencer is ok at them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27962438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kineticstars/pseuds/kineticstars
Summary: Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t that Spencer didn’t—or couldn’t—feel. Emotions, for him, were like mixing colors in a paint set and getting a color that wasn’t identifiable as anything. All the different colors were there, but you couldn’t pick a single one out or even describe what the new color was.
Series: Because I’m Weird [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965400
Comments: 1
Kudos: 43





	Four- Paradox

**Author's Note:**

> A little bit of a character study! 
> 
> This was originally going to be about how Reid handled Morgan leaving and now it’s...not that. 
> 
> (Disclaimer: I’m not autistic so if anything is inaccurate please let me know!)

Paradoxically, Spencer had been told he was both easy and hard to read.

As a kid his reactions to things were often described as ‘robotic’. When they weren’t described that way, his emotional reactions were referred to as inappropriate or over the top (again, paradoxically).

Sometimes his feelings were hard to identify and manifested as nothing, like they were separate from him.

Sometimes people expected him to feel something, but he didn’t.

Other times his emotions were strong and intense, yet even then he didn’t know the right words to describe them. 

(Figuring out what other people were feeling was another can of worms.)

Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t that Spencer didn’t—or couldn’t—feel. Emotions, for him, were like mixing colors in a paint set and getting a color that wasn’t identifiable as anything. All the different colors were there, but you couldn’t pick a single one out or even describe what the new color was.

After his parents split he spent weeks seeing the school counselor because they wanted to know how he was doing, how he felt about his dad leaving. But Spencer didn’t know how he felt about it. He couldn’t explain it; his feelings were best summed up in statistics that meant ‘my life is falling apart’ but the teachers didn’t know that and weren’t interested in that so he told them what they wanted to hear and eventually they got off his back.

Throughout his school years Spencer developed a somewhat methodical approach to emotion. He watched other people to see how they reacted to things and copied them, or used other people’s description of emotions to gauge his own. Spencer liked it when things were straightforward, logical, and easy to understand. Emotions were anything but. That’s why he liked profiling so much. When he started studying psychology and profiling he had it down to a science: a factual way to determine his and others thoughts and intentions. Of course, people often weren’t as predictable as behavioral analysis made them out to be.

(Spencer learned this early on when his mother’s episodes were at their worst and she‘d say she hated him even though it wasn’t true.)

He’d gotten used to the ambiguity his emotions manifested as, but other people interpreted it as him shutting them out, when he wasn’t.

When Gideon died Morgan told him that. Morgan said he ‘couldn’t shut people out this time’. Spencer wanted to tell him he wasn’t shutting anyone out, but he could barely bring himself to speak at all. Once he finally found the strength to say anything he quoted part of Gideon’s letter. The letter Gideon wrote just for Spencer because he knew Spencer would take his departure the hardest. Gideon knew Spencer processed things differently, and tried his best to figure out what to do.

With most emotional things in Spencer’s life came change, which was something else he had a hard time with. Change made him anxious, and anxiety wasanother feeling Spencer couldn’t quite explain.

Maybe change itself was a feeling. Spencer could easily say that things changing made him feel like he was losing control which subsequently caused him to feel worried. But worry was something Spencer didn’t know how to handle, so he locked it away. Somehow, (paradoxically), people could tell when he was worried.

When Spencer was dealing with Morgan’s departure Antonia Slade caught it. (“I’m guessing you have to suppress your grief around your teammates because they aren’t quite as affected,” she said.)

Morgan left and everyone else moved on.

For everyone else it was ‘Yes, were sad Morgan is gone but we’re happy for him and he’s safe.’

For Spencer it was ‘things are different now and I don’t know what to do about it’.

It wasn’t that Spencer shut people out, but whenever big things happened things changed and emotions were colliding on top of each other and overwhelming, and he needed to get away to figure out what he was feeling. Figuring it out wasn’t easy. It was confusing and isolating, because if he couldn’t figure it out neither could anyone else.

**Author's Note:**

> I think about cm way too much so I had fun writing this but then my mind went ~blank~ when it came to an ending so I feel like it ends kind of abruptly. 
> 
> To people who leave comments: I see them and I am grateful for them! I just have absolutely no idea what to say in response 😅
> 
> If you have any suggestions for things I should write I would love to know :)


End file.
